Quote:
Originally Posted by cromag
That seems to be the trend. Which means even vendors want Amazon to be a monopoly.  |
To me Amazon may as well be a monopoly now, though at least for the moment a benign one. Just about all of the others make you jump through hoops to get a liberated file you can read on the device you want. Amazon files can be downloaded and imported straight into Calibre, with or without Apprentice Alf, as you choose. Kobo and Google both require an intervening step using ADE, which for the moment is fine and will remain so until the switch is flicked on the new DRM scheme, which for the moment remains unbroken. As apparent from this thread Kobo has other problems as well, which also includes an emphasis on marketing tricks to hide prices which are rarely competitive. B&N does not want you to download your ebooks at all, and though there are of course ways around there are yet more hoops to jump through. Baen is excellent but not a major player in the same sense as the others.
At the moment my preferences are Baen, for those books they stock and at a good price, then Amazon. I haven't bought anything from Google but have no objection to doing so, though I expect to travel a lot and would have to ensure that I can get the best prices when I do so and not be stuck in one over-priced location like Australia for my purchases. Not interested in buying from B&N. Not only have they behaved appallingly with the downloads issue, but their future in ebooks to me is very much in doubt. From a major player in E-Ink devices they now offer only one, and a basic model. For many people tablets are their best reading option, but their are also many who love their e-ink devices. Though I may ultimately prove to be wrong, it seems to me that B&N has made on bad decision after another, and there seems to be end in sight to this trend. I'm also happy to buy ebooks on an ad-hoc basis from vendors provided that they are drm-free and in a format that I can at least import to Calibre and convert as necessary. I am not interested in buying from any of the plague of "publisher-friendly" platforms which are usually introduced with great hype and touted as offering alternatives to Amazon, but which are so user-hostile that they won't even allow the download of your books.
So far as I can see, the only really good reason to buy from any of the major players other than Amazon is to provide support in the hope that Amazon will have at least one major competitor. If that is to happen, it looks like it will be Google, but it could be Kobo as well if they get their act together.